It’s in London

It’s in London and it’s by a canal, a canal whose surface is a skin of softly spoken repression and has a kinship with the flutter of air that strokes and pokes the skin of water and sometimes makes the house-boats bump against each other like beasts at a waterhole.

It’s in London and there’s the tut-tut, looking-through-the-curtains rhythm of machines across the canal, the movement of hi-visibility yellow, the governance of the land as this part of Hackney Wick keeps being developed. 

It’s in London and there’s a van, and a man with another man, clanging kegs and casks, the lion and the lamb, the van picking up beer that’s ready to stake its reputation right out there on the Margate pier that London’s beer arena has become. Crate Golden Ale, a glowing glass of goodness that revitalises a style I, day to day, find so unawesome but Crate Golden Ale turns things topsy-turvy and makes me glad to have found it.

It’s in London and there’s a gleaming glass of dark golden beer, held in front of me, a refreshing zip and spritz on the tongue, an amber-sweet cloud of comfort that reminds me of lying down in a warm meadow, with a sob of hop and a Beretta shot of bitterness in the finish. Truman’s Runner.

And outside in the street a once pub, once called the Lord Napier, stands on the corner, blitzed —a word abroad in the manor 70 odd years ago — with colour and words spread across its façade, jam on toast, now closed, boarded and shut, a sign of the cross to Crate, where the van with the man and the other man with the kegs and casks of beer, the lion and the lamb, pick up the beer.

And somewhere in London, somewhere where the postcode signifies a city, someone sets up a mash tun and boom it’s…